Bokeh here is ok. Despite not being fully round you need to truly zoom in to see it. Between 2 and 2.8 is more pronounced but still this is really true with lights in the bokeh area at infinity.generally it is an amazing lens and should not be a surprised it was optimised for 1.2 resulting in some compromises.I am quite happy with it.

Laqup wrote:Mr Giggles wrote:fpessolano wrote:Yes, except size and light balls at f/2 and f/2.8 produce bad bokeh. The 1.8 is better in that respect.anything else it is an amazing lens.here is an image from the Z 1.2 lens taken at f1.8decide for yourself if the Bokeh is OKBokeh is pretty bad in this example.In the image above I marked some examples of polygonal bokeh. Uniformity &"roundness" in general is bad as well. I believe some of those effects were somewhat enhanced by post processing (added contrast / clarity & sharpness to out of focus areas).How would you rate your example yourself?I would rate it as very acceptable. Really, the chasing of specifications and minute differences that we see is rather silly.

the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.2 S Lens is a great lensI bought the Z9 for bif, having the pf500 mm, I coupled the pair together for a while until I bought the 1,2s.Now my Z mount 50mm 1,2s is glued to the Z9 and the pf500 is coupled to my Nikon D500 body (Stupid, maybe)the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.2 S Lens is unreal.Philip

HeavyDuty wrote:Laqup wrote:Mr Giggles wrote:fpessolano wrote:Yes, except size and light balls at f/2 and f/2.8 produce bad bokeh. The 1.8 is better in that respect.anything else it is an amazing lens.here is an image from the Z 1.2 lens taken at f1.8decide for yourself if the Bokeh is OKBokeh is pretty bad in this example.In the image above I marked some examples of polygonal bokeh. Uniformity &"roundness" in general is bad as well. I believe some of those effects were somewhat enhanced by post processing (added contrast / clarity & sharpness to out of focus areas).How would you rate your example yourself?I would rate it as very acceptable. Really, the chasing of specifications and minute differences that we see is rather silly.I will answer this but first tell me what you think of the bokeh in these photos

Mr Giggles wrote:HeavyDuty wrote:Laqup wrote:Mr Giggles wrote:fpessolano wrote:Yes, except size and light balls at f/2 and f/2.8 produce bad bokeh. The 1.8 is better in that respect.anything else it is an amazing lens.here is an image from the Z 1.2 lens taken at f1.8decide for yourself if the Bokeh is OKBokeh is pretty bad in this example.In the image above I marked some examples of polygonal bokeh. Uniformity &"roundness" in general is bad as well. I believe some of those effects were somewhat enhanced by post processing (added contrast / clarity & sharpness to out of focus areas).How would you rate your example yourself?I would rate it as very acceptable. Really, the chasing of specifications and minute differences that we see is rather silly.I will answer this but first tell me what you think of the bokeh in these photosAlso fine.I’ve had lenses with brutal OOF rendering (what we used to call bokeh) and the 50/1.2 is nowhere near unpleasant.

HeavyDuty wrote:Mr Giggles wrote:HeavyDuty wrote:Laqup wrote:Mr Giggles wrote:fpessolano wrote:Yes, except size and light balls at f/2 and f/2.8 produce bad bokeh. The 1.8 is better in that respect.anything else it is an amazing lens.here is an image from the Z 1.2 lens taken at f1.8decide for yourself if the Bokeh is OKBokeh is pretty bad in this example.In the image above I marked some examples of polygonal bokeh. Uniformity &"roundness" in general is bad as well. I believe some of those effects were somewhat enhanced by post processing (added contrast / clarity & sharpness to out of focus areas).How would you rate your example yourself?I would rate it as very acceptable. Really, the chasing of specifications and minute differences that we see is rather silly.I will answer this but first tell me what you think of the bokeh in these photosAlso fine.I’ve had lenses with brutal OOF rendering (what we used to call bokeh) and the 50/1.2 is nowhere near unpleasant.these images were taken with a micro 4/3 lens that specifically was made to give what's called feathered bokehits the exact opposite of onion ring bokehonion ring is light and soft in the middle and becomes hard and brittle on the outsidefeathered bokeh is hard in the middle and fads away to the outsidethis is a MUST read for anyone who wants to understand Bokeh :https://robinwong.blogspot.com/2018/01/about-that-olympus-feathered-bokeh.html

A couple of shots from yesterday at Castello di Stupinigi (where "War and piece" with Audrey Hepburn was shot), at full aperture. Lovely sharpness full open on the thin plane of focus, and delicate bokeh! Almost Barry Lyndon-esque.

Lucabeer wrote:A couple of shots from yesterday at Castello di Stupinigi (where "War and piece" with Audrey Hepburn was shot), at full aperture. Lovely sharpness full open on the thin plane of focus, and delicate bokeh! Almost Barry Lyndon-esque.Really amazingvery impressive for fully openIt will only be appreciated when the viewer view at the full size and pan to see the details and sharpness

Lucabeer wrote:A couple of shots from yesterday at Castello di Stupinigi (where "War and piece" with Audrey Hepburn was shot), at full aperture. Lovely sharpness full open on the thin plane of focus, and delicate bokeh! Almost Barry Lyndon-esque.what a great lens ,,,,,,, one of the best

First shot: Bokeh is too intrusive, I don't like itSecond shot: Not really anything to talk about regarding Bokeh, nothing bothers meThird shot: Bokeh is too intrusive, don't like it.Fourth Shot: ambivalent, neither here nor there on the bokeh.Fifth Shot: Bokeh is a bit intrusive, not really a fan, but not to the same degree of dislike as 1 and 2.But here's the thing - Bokeh is SO variable, and SO subjective (I'd even say it's like comparing solid state and tube amps, but we know how that turned out...) that it's hard to say much about a lenses bokeh without looking at it across a LOT of scenarios, with different distances (camera to subject, camera to background, subject to background), shapes, etc.And I'm pretty sure I could take ANY lens, even ones with excellent bokeh like the 50/1.2S, and find a scenario where the bokeh isn't amazing. It's just impossible to be "perfect in bokeh" across all scenarios that exist.Some mention by others that the Canon 50/1.2 is "optically identical" to the Nikon. No. Nope. and No Way. Different designs = different results. Let's be honest though - all the 50/1.2 options from the "bit three" (Nikon/Canon/Sony) are all solid lenses. We're not in the realm of cheap kit lenses or consumer budget primes here. They're all really good.However, from a technical standpoint. looking both at the patents for the Canon RF and the Nikon 50/1.2S as well as the theoretical wide open MTF supplied, the Nikon was intended to be a bit better. The patent diagrams show a bit better control of astigmatism and distortion over the Canon.I would need eons more experience with the Canon than I have to have anything substantial to say about a comparison, and it gets really hard comparing against two different platforms, but from where I sit, out of limited experience, if I had to rank which of the (excellent) 50/1.2S lenses, it would be 1) nikon, 2) canon, 3) sony in that order. IMO Nikons has the best balance of bokeh (front and back), the best flare resistance, and is reference level sharp at landscape distances too. Where I could see someone choosing another is in the portrait distance ranges, where there are designer-specific intent differences between them and perhaps in an absolute sense, not one is universally right for everyone. Size/weight advantages might skew someones choice one direction or the other two.An additional note: The Nikon 50/1.2S could be considered the "lifes work" of their most senior designer, and he put a LOT of thought into how that lens performed and rendered.

another Mike -just curious what do you think of the Bokeh of these images ???A ) this was done with the feather Bokeh Oly PRO  micro 4/3  :B ) Nikon Z prime 85C ) the 50 f1.2 Z from the OPD ) The " Magic lens " form the Fuji system - very low element count primitive design 35 mm - f1.4E) film -possibly tri-xall images are mine and taken by me( what a great forum ,,,,, and what a great thread )

Image #1: Bokeh far too obtrusive - it's like the bokeh itself is competing too much with the subject. Not sure why (because I'm not one of those Bokeh guys who knows all 4302041 types of bokeh), maybe the central region of the bokeh is too hard/bright?Image #2: Bokeh doesn't bother me. Sure, cats-eye, but that's common. I'd say offhand, bokeh is between good and very good, leaning more to the latter than former, but not exceptional.Image #3: you've presented this one before - honestly the post process is too strong for me to evaluate the bokeh, so I'll have to pass on this oneImage #4, bokeh nicely soft, but the spherical aberration glow might be covering up a lot of other flaws. Color aberrations bother me a bit (both a bit in the bokeh, and the transition from OOF to IF to OOF on the skin more so) - but I'm sensitive to this more than most.. A classic case of a lens likely designed for bokeh at the expense of everything else.Image #5: Tri-X maybe Plus-X, you're probably right in the former, but man, it's been a lot of decades since I've worked in film (and have no desire to go back) so I could be so wrong it's not funny. Bokeh doesn't bother me at all.

I really like how the 50/1.2 renders, that’s why I purchased one.   I don’t get caught up in why I like it, I’m not a bokeh cork sniffer.

anotherMike wrote:First shot: Bokeh is too intrusive, I don't like itSecond shot: Not really anything to talk about regarding Bokeh, nothing bothers meThird shot: Bokeh is too intrusive, don't like it.Fourth Shot: ambivalent, neither here nor there on the bokeh.Fifth Shot: Bokeh is a bit intrusive, not really a fan, but not to the same degree of dislike as 1 and 2.But here's the thing - Bokeh is SO variable, and SO subjective (I'd even say it's like comparing solid state and tube amps, but we know how that turned out...) that it's hard to say much about a lenses bokeh without looking at it across a LOT of scenarios, with different distances (camera to subject, camera to background, subject to background), shapes, etc.And I'm pretty sure I could take ANY lens, even ones with excellent bokeh like the 50/1.2S, and find a scenario where the bokeh isn't amazing. It's just impossible to be "perfect in bokeh" across all scenarios that exist.Some mention by others that the Canon 50/1.2 is "optically identical" to the Nikon. No. Nope. and No Way. Different designs = different results. Let's be honest though - all the 50/1.2 options from the "bit three" (Nikon/Canon/Sony) are all solid lenses. We're not in the realm of cheap kit lenses or consumer budget primes here. They're all really good.However, from a technical standpoint. looking both at the patents for the Canon RF and the Nikon 50/1.2S as well as the theoretical wide open MTF supplied, the Nikon was intended to be a bit better. The patent diagrams show a bit better control of astigmatism and distortion over the Canon.I would need eons more experience with the Canon than I have to have anything substantial to say about a comparison, and it gets really hard comparing against two different platforms, but from where I sit, out of limited experience, if I had to rank which of the (excellent) 50/1.2S lenses, it would be 1) nikon, 2) canon, 3) sony in that order. IMO Nikons has the best balance of bokeh (front and back), the best flare resistance, and is reference level sharp at landscape distances too. Where I could see someone choosing another is in the portrait distance ranges, where there are designer-specific intent differences between them and perhaps in an absolute sense, not one is universally right for everyone. Size/weight advantages might skew someones choice one direction or the other two.I’m not a lens expert so looking at their designs on paper does not help me understand how the would compare so much. What attributes have you score them as Nikon, Canon, and then Sony? Then what attributes say that the Canon or Sony might favor portrait use?thanks for your comments.An additional note: The Nikon 50/1.2S could be considered the "lifes work" of their most senior designer, and he put a LOT of thought into how that lens performed and rendered.

Hey Steve,I need some time to come up with a halfway decent reply that you deserve.However, in the mean time, be clearly aware we're splitting hairs in some way here. Anything I say does not imply one lens is "HORRIBLE" while another lens is "AWESOME", right? We're dealing with more subtle things here, that not every photographer will potentially even see nor care about, and again, I don't have adequate time with all three lenses in a big three way comparison to have fully "absolute" thoughts either.I'll get to a better answer a bit later that might (or might not) help....

anotherMike wrote:Hey Steve,I need some time to come up with a halfway decent reply that you deserve.However, in the mean time, be clearly aware we're splitting hairs in some way here. Anything I say does not imply one lens is "HORRIBLE" while another lens is "AW, ESOME", right? We're dealing with more subtle things here, that not every photographer will potentially even see nor care about, and again, I don't have adequate time with all three lenses in a big three way comparison to have fully "absolute" thoughts either.I'll get to a better answer a bit later that might (or might not) help....Thank you. I currently have access to Canon RF, Sony FE, and Nikkor Z and actually own the Canon RF 50/1.2L and Sony FE 50/1.2 GM. I'm relatively new to the Nikon system Z lenses and originally did not plan to plan to purchase the Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.2 S due to its size and weight and my ownership of the other two. This thread thought has peaked my interest for sure and want to better understand what that lens offers that I should consider. I did purchase the Nikkor Z 50/1.8 S (used) and for my Z9 based kit its very nice. I'm very happy with my other Z based glass so I have a great interest in what I can learn about the Z 50/1.2 S.

Whoa, you already own the Canon RF and the Sony GM? Easy choice! Put the money towards a really nice trip somewhere, or buy another lens LOL. Having all three would probably be nuts.That being said. I apologize that this is going to be longwinded. I'm always longwinded, but it's a busy week and I don't think I'll be writing efficiently. So: Couple topics to discuss first.Lens Performance (reality vs the tests you see on the websites)Once we get past the consumer primes, the kit lenses, and into the "better stuff", which is what we're discussing today, things get more "interesting" from the lens designers point of view. Reality is that no lens is perfect, and all lenses have tradeoffs inherent in the design process. As Roger Cicala has noted elsewhere, it's a triad of the usual good/cheap/small (or something like that), pick two items. Obviously the more budget "room" the designer has, the "more" he has to negotiate with. A guy with a dollar twenty gets a value meal, but the executive with a c-note gets a really nice meal, same with lenses. So we have to start by discussing what lens performance is all about. The first thing that comes to many folks minds is "sharpness", but what is that? It's not a simple term. I prefer to think of resolution within the construct of optical bench MTF terms from days past, where we talk about contrast at various resolution frequencies, which I often term "structures". This can be lower frequencies, like 10lp/mm, or what I term coarse structures, this can be mid frequencies, like 30lp/mm, which I would term medium-fine structures, or very high frequencies, like 50lp/mm, which I would term very fine structures. Important to note, NOT ALL SCENES or scenarios can present you with the very fine structures - any even slight miss with focus, motion blur, subject motion, etc, and these go away from you real quick. I've mentioned this name lots, but MTF pioneer Otto Schade believed that image quality of a lens is more determined by the shape (the area squared actually) under an MTF trace where resolution frequency is plotted against contrast, which has the implication that no one specific frequency is the only absolute/universal/voice from a deity measure of "sharpness", but rather, a lot of the are, and by nature of things, this also means that the aggregate of low to middle frequency performance is extremely important - more important than a lens knocking the ball out of the ballpark at, say, 80lp/mm frequency. If you think further, this also means test chart performance isn't always a good measure, because they're measuring a rough proxy for sharpness, often MTF50, which is more about one spot as opposed to a bunch of spots, and thus while perhaps a vague idea of how "sharp" a lens is, isn't the full story.My current thinking - which means this is subject to change as I learn more, am corrected by those who know more, or think through things more, is that the very best lenses are very well *balanced* between how the resolution performance throughout the various structures is. Some lenses tend to have emphasis (in a subtle way) in different areas. IMO, let's take the Sigma 50/1.4 Art. A very nice lens. But rendering wise, I'd call it subjectively "solid", or "weighty" or other words from the past like "lots of global contrast", but from a more technical lingo, it's weighted a bit towards lower frequency structures, and IMO that gives it a look (rendering) that is *different* than the Sigma 35/1.4 Art, which subjectively I'd term "lean, crisp, sharp", etc, but technically would mean it's concentrating a bit on mid/high structures. Someone with astute eyes and good monitor, etc, will, I think, over time, notice this difference between both of these lenses. Which is why, I think, besides being better edge to edge, corner to corner, the Sigma 40/1.4 Art, which represents the later stages of ART lenses as opposed to the beginning, is the better lens - because it's more *balanced* in it's resolution components. This means IMO it gets out of the way, is more transparent, more honest to the source.When we talk about rendering, we also talk a lot about bokeh - probably the most subjective of all subjects, and OOF transition, which is where we'll get to with the 50/1.2S Nikon in a bit. If you think about real life, we're not shooting test charts. So in the design process, there might be "options" or "paths" a designer could take that will have the lens extremely sharp at the precise point of focus, but perhaps at the expense of the transition to OOF not being natural. Some designers - Jun Hirakawa of ex Pentax fame, believed strongly that controlling astigmatism was vastly important in order to preserve a sense of realism/depth in an addition, even if it meant leaving in some other aberrations that made the lens a bit less "sharp" at the precise focus point. Both Haruo Sato (58/1.4G) and Hiroki Harada (50/1.2S) of Nikon have discussed making sure that, when taking images of people, that the rendering is realistic and there is strong inference that some aspects of resolution performance were horse traded away in order to get this. A lot of this deals with the fine tuning of control of spherical aberration, but there are more, and I don't have the space (or frankly probably the knowledge) to delve into that.The thing is, none of these decisions in the lens design process - the tradeoffs, the weighting of structure performance, the aberration balancing, are "YES" or "NO" binary things: there is a range. Again, having discussed this now, think about the *limitations* of a flat test chart measurement versus real life which has depth. The takeaway here is to be *aware* that there was intentional design decisions made during the design process often in lenses intended for portrait use in portrait distance - again, in portrait distance ranges. No one set of decisions is universally right across ALL possible scenarios just as no one single person is better than everyone else on the planet. So it's the awareness of the lens behavior (not found on a test chart site) and how that works with your own shooting style. More on that later.I should importantly note that the rendering/realism parts of the big paragraph above really relate to portrait distance performance. Think of that as "Part A" of lens performance. "Part B" would be the performance at distance, and there the decision AREAS are different. Astigmatism and Field Curvature are huge, and lateral color is too, because those don't go away much at all as we stop down, and will absolutely affect the performance in the corners/edges. Particularly with wide angles, if you want good landscape performance, you want minimal to no astigmatism, a flat field, and no lateral color.The Nikon 50/1.2S characteristicsHiroki Harada notes in Nikon ads that the lens he always admired as a kid was the original manual focus Noct Nikkor. He's a senior designer now, and I get the strong feeling this was/is his "statement" project (the 50/1.2S). He put a lot of time into "Part A" of above - how the lens rendered at portrait distances. He wanted natural depiction while being sharp, but not to the point where the rendering and the OOF transition were not great. He wanted excellent bokeh, both front and behind the focus point, which is why the lens is so large (it has nothing to do with focus breathing from what I've heard). He mentions in interviews achieving an excellent balance of the frequency structures we talked about. From a landscape ("Part B") performance, meaning at distance, it's extremely sharp, very flat field, and relies little of software correction.So, what do do?The thing to be aware is of the design intent, of all the lenses. Then look at your (not mine, not some other persons) preferences and factors you value image quality wise. This is primarily within the context of portrait distance performance. As an example, I'm primarily a studio shooter, secondarily an outdoor shooter (people) and then on my other side, a landscape studio. It might shock you to hear this, but in the studio I use either a 40 art on a D850 or the 24-70/2.8s because for the *studio*, I prefer the balancing to be more towards resolution in the portrait distances as opposed to bokeh and OOF transition quality, because, well, in the studio, bokeh doesn't matter, and OOF transition is still good on the other lenses. Outside, different story - now the balancing, the design decision made on the 50/1.2S win over the 40 art and the 24-70, so the 50/1.2S is the chosen lens. So think about that - I am aware of the "real" performance parameters of the lenses at various differences, and thought carefully about whether those are important to each type of work I do. My answer is not meant to be everyones. And again, at distance, the 50/1.2S is my chosen 50 for it's insane performance at distance, the "Part B" performance let's say.So for you - the RF is likely closer to the Nikon than the Sony is. May not be a reason to add a third expensive 50, unless in your renting/evaluation you find that the tuning decisions in the 50/1.2S design process are a good "marriage" to your shooting style/scenarios and preferences.I apologize for the great length.

Exceptional writeup, Mike - thank you!

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply and the education experience. Originally I had no intent to purchase multiple 50/1.2 lenses even though on DSLR I owned the Canon EF 50/1.2L and 85/1.2L II. I’ve always been a multiple system shooter and shot Canon for my later film days through DSLR days. Back almost 10 years ago I started shooting mirrorless along side the Canon with Fuji and now Sony. Canon introduced their RF 50/1.2L for mirrorless first so of course i had to give it a try even though by then Sony’s mirrorless had become my main system where I had the FE 50/1.4 ZA (always have been a Zeiss fan even though that was not pure Zeiss). I’m a big fan of 50mm even though others are bored by it. So of course when Sony added their FE 50/1.2 GM with its great focus speed and accuracy I had to add it.Nikon and the Z9 is relatively new to me. I had always wanted to try the D700 and D850 but college tuitions for the kids took priority to switching DSLR systems. Now that I’m retired I thought I would give the new Nikon a try. So of course the Z 50/1.2 S peaked my interest even though I bought into the Z9 more for trying some other lenses first and my BIF hobby. Still will at least rent it to see how it compares.Thank you again for you help. Hope my long reply did not bore you and others too much.

Got the 1.2 today. (I'm testing it extensively in our studio on real subjects, vs. the 50 f/ 1.8But first a glips on the DOF and OOF rendering... In my dining room with NO additional lighting.50mm f/1.2 at almost MFD. The box was literally about a foot or less behind the Z30Out on the porch, I placed the focus box on the light with the little black hump on itShot 3 shots, I tried correcting the exposure with shutter speed using the EVF meter.Rested the Z9 on the porch wooden rail for slow shutter speeds at higher apertues50mm f/1.2 @ f/1.2BELOW 50mm f1.2 @ f/16Time To get into the studio...50mm **f/1.2** @ f/4.550mm **f/1.8** @ f/4.5Can you spot any difference in the studio?Below are the slides. almost untouchedBut we wanted to see what f/1.2 can do @ 1.2, So here we go, (It was a small challenge to dial back all flashes to a minimum. Basically, the room light played a role too.50mm f/1.2 @ f/1.2